


Questionable Math

by paperclipbutterfly



Series: Non-Canon Black Jack One-Shots [6]
Category: Black Jack Original Comics, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Almost Kiss, Because to hell with protocols that's why, Cynthia taking matters into her own paws, DAMMIT ZAC, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I hope you know who I am by now, Mission SNAFU, Mutual Pining, No Smut, Of course angst, Slow burn intensifies, Tiny smolder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 12:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15510282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbutterfly/pseuds/paperclipbutterfly
Summary: Jack Savage finds himself stranded behind enemy lines after a mission in the desert goes straight to hell. With time running out, his thoughts turn to the one mammal he most wishes to see before the end claims him.





	Questionable Math

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aoimotion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aoimotion/gifts).



> This is a shameless and obvious mirror to Jack and Cynthia's first meeting. I had to write the turnabout, because damn it all I want to see Cynthia being the powerhouse I know she is. Plus! I finally get to try my hand at writing Colonel Kohle. :D
> 
> Credit where it's due. All the OCs in this one-shot belong to aoimotion, and I have her permission to write them here.

“Agent Savage to Command. Come in, Command. Over.” _Thirty-four._

It occurred to Jack that he should probably stop trying and remain silent at this point. Each additional call that went unanswered only served to further lower the probability he’d receive one.

The mission that had started off so badly could not possibly have ended any worse. Their intel had been catastrophically wrong. It was so immeasurably terrible that there was only one conclusion to be drawn.

Their informant had betrayed them.

 _Not that it matters now_ , Jack thought grimly, and dropped the magazine of his gun to cast another glance at the remaining bullets (two left; still just two; again, only the two). The commotion outside the sweltering hangar was still kicking up sand and the occasional round of gunfire. It was only a matter of time before they searched this place. Outnumbered and outgunned, he was in no position to put up a fight when they found him.

The colonel would know what had happened when the extraction team arrived back without him. There would be the bleak debrief and then the blood-soaked arithmetic that would cut their losses, which unfortunately this time included one Jack Savage. The standard protocol at this point was undeniable. No additional attempts would be made to retrieve a mammal they couldn’t confirm was alive or dead. No reason to risk more resources for a single agent… or for a body. It was simple math. Kohle knew all about calculated gambles, and when not to take them. Jack had lost enough games of poker to him to know that all too well.

It made sense. It was sound and reasonable, stark and crisp as chalk on a blackboard.

As hot as the desert was, that perfect logic etched frost on his bones _._

“Agent Savage to Command. Come in, Command. Over.” _Thirty-five._ He just couldn’t help it now. Maybe he’d start counting backwards instead, and at zero he’d run out with his two remaining bullets and take down one last syndicate criminal before they got him.

The throbbing in his temple was starting to blur his vision, and the subtle head shake he gave did nothing to clear it any. Jack reached up and wiped away the little trickle of blood oozing from the cut above his eyebrow with a subdued hiss. It was only an annoyance; if he had made it home, it probably wouldn’t have needed that many stitches. Three, maybe. Another scar for the collection. How many of those did he have now? Multitudes. Scores.

At any rate… more than he cared to count.

He leaned his head against the crate beside him and closed his eyes. “Please come in.”

Jack realized too late what a mistake that was, putting his eyelids down. They weighed a metric ton, and there would be no prying them open again now. Sleep was a fickle friend he visited with too infrequently, and seldom for long enough; it would take advantage of this invitation. He quipped sometimes when Walker caught him staying late at the office that he’d have plenty of time to sleep when he was dead. She never did care for that joke.

_Cynthia…_

A dull pang thudded against his ribcage. It figured that she’d steal her way into his brain now at the end of all things. The frustrating, the infuriating, the incalculably unreachable Cynthia Walker. There was regret, and something resembling longing as his thoughts turned to her. Of the many mammals vying for space in Jack’s mind then, only she stirred up such turbulent emotions that he might have shed a tear or two if the desert heat hadn’t robbed so much water from him already. All the countless mistakes he’d made with her.

What he wouldn’t have given to see her again…

He started to drift through time turned thick as molasses. Slogged into it, trudged against a riptide current that was now pulling him down and down and down into a sludgy blackness from which he would surely never return…

*****

_< -vage… Come in, Agent Savage.>_

Adrenaline jolted Jack awake, a voice inconceivably close somehow wresting him back from the inky, timeless void he had sunk into. He swung his gun out in front of him, an automatic reflex to an unexpected stimulus, but the honey-sweet voice that had called out—that had beckoned to him from beyond the abyss—was not one that he had want to fear.

“Walker?”

A sharp breath hissed in his ear. <I’ve got him… Agent Savage, what is your position?>

“Position? Ah…” It was hilarious, and Jack had to stop himself from laughing at the absurdity. It may have been the delirium, which he knew very well was a common side effect of heatstroke, but as he had nothing useful to offer the hallucination that sounded like Cynthia, he said, “Seated upright against a crate, right leg bent, head turned to one s—”

<Are you _seriously_ cracking a joke right now?! >

Now he had to laugh, albeit quietly. Lunacy, sheer lunacy; he must have gone mad as a March hare to contrive such a convincing delusion as this. It even got her exasperated huff right.

“Can’t provide information that I don’t know, now can I, _Miss Walker_?” he drawled at the mental mirage, and then chuckled again softly to himself. Oh, she would have been fuming angry with him right now. You know… if that were really her.

There was another tetchy exhale in his ear. < _Fine_. Since you’re being even _less_ cooperative than usual, we’ll just go through the compound one building at a time. Stand by. >

“Could I ‘sit by’ instead? Standing is a bit taxing at the mom—”

There was a screech of feedback before silence set in again. Well, it was awfully nice of his addled brain to give a definitive end to the illusion. Jack sighed and craned his neck up to see over the crate. The commotion outside seemed to have died down. The shouts and gunfire had settled, but that didn’t mean he was safe now. Enemies were still about, and the number he’d be up against on the other side of those doors was formidable. The odds were still not in his favor.

Jack checked the ammunition in his gun (two left; still just two; again, only the two), and prepared to run from the building just as the world outside went straight to hell. The repetitive bursts of gunfire flared again with reckless abandon, and the sound of revving vehicles droned past the building. Furious shouts in a language he only half understood fired almost as fast as the bullets whizzing through the air. He hunkered back down, heart racing in anticipation, and brought his gun up beside his face at the ready.

It was a good thing he ducked when he did, because the doors chose just that moment to burst open, flooding the hangar with searing sunlight. He dropped his ears and held his breath as the sound of soft footsteps came in from outside. How strange; they didn’t sound like hoofbeats, and even his ears had trouble tracking the mammal that made them. All he could tell was that there was a presence in the storage area with him, somewhere, moving like a ghost beyond the range of his senses.

_clink_

It was tiny, almost imperceptible: the sound of a round springing into a barrel, and all at once very close by. Jack trained his firearm out in front of him, stared with unblinking eyes at the end of the line of crates, and waited.

That moment that exists between heartbeats… this was all the time he took to decide not to shoot at the muzzle of the gun that came peeking around the corner. There was a familiarity in the actions behind it, in the scent and the presence that wasn’t foe, though it also wasn’t quite friend.

Next heartbeat his gun lowered to the floor as she stepped into his direct line of vision, turned on Jack with precisely trained movements. The stealthy apparition that was Cynthia Walker relaxed the fierce grimace gracing her forehead and spoke urgently into her comm as she holstered her gun.

“Agent Walker to transport. Agent Savage is secured. South hangar. All agents fall back and prepare to depart.”

Her words rang in his ears clear as church bells and twice as intense; he’d never known religion, but the sound of her voice came upon him like a spiritual experience. If this was a hallucination, he would gladly let it replace his reality.

Cynthia came at Jack with even, measured steps until she was towering over him. Immediately, he was pinned beneath a look that was halfway between relief and outright loathing. Like she wanted to both embrace and throttle him at the same time.

His stomach lurched. If there had been anything still left in it, he would have thrown it up right then and there.

“Camels must not have a very good sense of smell,” Cynthia said, reaching into her supply pack and producing a small water bottle. Jack’s nose twitched, parched lips smacking in anticipation as it dropped into his eager paws. He guzzled the blessed liquid down with enormous, greedy gulps as she knelt panting beside him. “I nearly choked on your scent the moment we landed, you stink so awful.” She gave a snort as if trying to clear her nose of the very odor she was describing. She paused a few seconds before she asked, “Are you injured?”

With the water bottle now drained, Jack pulled his own voice from somewhere beneath the sand and grit and said thickly, “I’m fine.”

“Good.” Cynthia opened a pocket on her belt and pinched the cut on his forehead roughly between her paw pads.

The surprise shock of pain sucked the air out of his lungs and Jack gasped it back with a breath sharp as broken glass. “For God’s sake, Walker, take it easy!”

“Be quiet and hold still.” She tore open the packet she held between her teeth with practiced finesse and fixed the medical strip over the cut to partially seal it. “That’ll have to do for the moment,” she said, and closed her pocket up again.

He prodded his head gingerly just around the wound. “Well, if I wasn’t hurt before, I am now.”

A harsh grunt interrupted Cynthia’s panting. “You’ll need stitches.”

“It’s not that deep.”

“At least five.”

“Surely no more than three.” Jack added quickly, “If that.”

“ _Five_. For certain.” Her eyes ran over every inch of him as she shook her head in a pitying kind of way. “You look like hell.”

Jack gave a rueful half smile. “Yes, well, I’d wager a little of it probably rubbed off on my way through.”

Her forehead tightened, a deep crease chiseled in between her eyebrows. She pressed her lips together in a pencil-thin line, then asked, “Can you walk?”

“I imagine so, since you haven’t gotten at my legs yet.”

Cynthia rolled her eyes as she stood. “You unbearable idiot. Are you going to come with me or not?”

Jack turned his face up then to lock his eyes with hers. She was a divine vision in the blazing sunlight leaking into the hangar. It lit up her flawless white fur, created a brilliant aura that radiated around her like a halo. Beatific. Angelic.

He blinked. No, that wasn’t quite right, was it? Cynthia Walker was many things—a _legion_ of things—but an angel was not one of them. No, not an angel. A _Valkyrie._ A battle maiden with amber eyes burning with the explosive intensity of a dying star. Had he forgotten—he must have forgotten, because he had to have noticed before now—the strength she had in her?

“Come on, Jack,” the vixen said, and there was a softness, a sincerity—an intimacy—on her face as she offered her paw down to him. “Let’s get you away from this place.”

He took hold of it, only too happy to comply.

*****

Colonel Kohle stood in his office at the window with a half-filled tumbler in his paw. The weighty burden perched on his shoulders would have crushed any lesser mammal, but his inner constitution, forged for years in a crucible of military hellfire, wouldn’t allow such a thing. So, naturally, when there came a firm knock at his door, he plastered a smile on his muzzle at once.

“Come in, come in,” was his chipper invitation, and the door creaked slowly inward as Jack entered.

There was a neutral expression on his face, but the same kind of fatigue in his eyes that Kohle was feeling in each and every one of his joints. He shouldn’t have even been in the office today at all, but no one would dare tell him that. After spending two boring days in the hospital, Jack was beyond ready to feel useful again. It was practically a given that he wouldn’t take the full allotted recovery time (he never did), even though it was strongly recommended (it always was). There was just no keeping that hare at home any longer than was absolutely necessary. All the same, he certainly seemed to resemble himself again, back in a suit crisp and pressed, footsteps firm and sure, eyes sharp and assessing.

The old dog set the glass on the windowsill and threw his arms wide. “There he is! Have a seat, Jack, please. How’re you doing? How was the debrief?”

Jack didn’t sit in the chair that he’d been offered, but instead stood beside it and placed a reserved paw on the high back. “Tedious. As usual.”

“Ah, yes, yes, I can imagine.” Kohle deepened his smile, added just a bit of warmth to it. “Hell of a predicament we found ourselves in. Very troublesome. Vital to get all the details nailed down while everything was still fresh. I appreciate your understanding, of course.”

Jack blinked. “Of course.”

Kohle picked his glass back up and sipped thoughtfully as he stepped around his desk. He leaned his back against it as he stood in front of Jack and asked, “So, to what do I owe the pleasure today? You know you should be home resting.”

His agent’s face darkened within a deep frown. “Forgive my impertinence, sir, but I must disagree. I have… _questions_ … and I believe only you will be able to answer them for me.”

“Indeed.” A cheerful tinkling chimed from the tumbler as the colonel tapped his wedding band against it. “Well then, I’ll be happy to answer what I can.” He lifted his drink at Jack. “Fire away.”

Even being given the green light for his inquiry didn’t free the words stuck in his throat. Jack looked away and picked at a loose thread on the chair back a few times before finally eking out, “I missed the extraction.”

Kohle chuckled. “This is a question?”

Jack turned back and firmed his voice. “I missed the extraction _and_ lost radio contact for almost 24 hours.”

“Still not hearing a question, dear boy.”

“Why did you send a team to recover what may very well have only been a body at that point?”

“Ah.” Kohle regarded the young mammal before him as he once had many years prior. A fleeting recognition of fondness tugged at the sinewy strings of his heart, and he said, “No one believed for a second that you were dead. I’m convinced that you have more lives than your assistant does.”

“Standard protocol states—”

“Don’t quote protocols to me,” Kohle interrupted stiffly, his smile flickering like a malfunctioning hologram to reveal the superior officer beneath it. “Remember: I wrote them.”

Jack’s eyes flashed. “Which means you know how to break them?”

The old dog’s face hardened a little further, his smile now dropping altogether. He swished the amber liquid around a few times before taking another sip. “I’ve always said you’re worth ten agents,” he said at last. “That’s why I only sent nine.”

The shift in the colonel’s countenance did not escape Jack’s attention, and he softened his next words considerably. “I find your math… rather questionable, sir.”

“Oh ho ho, is that right?” Kohle’s golden smile returned even brighter than before, but much in the same way pyrite is bright—a shine, a glitter not at all genuine. “I’d love to hear how you figure that. Please elaborate.”

“Walker…” The image of her white face came floating over him as she offered him her paw. It struck him blind, the words ‘ _Come on, Jack_ ’ echoing and blocking all other sounds for the briefest of moments. He blinked twice as his ear twitched, and just like that it was gone. “Walker was there.”

And that’s why the equation would never balance, would always come up at the end with a repeating decimal that went on forever. Because she was worth fifty of him. No… a _hundred_ of him. No… the world hadn’t yet discovered the algorithm that could calculate how much she was worth. He doubted inwardly that it ever would.

So, when Kohle said, “No, she wasn’t,” Jack’s mind went tumbling after those irrational, infinitely illogical words.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded. “Of course she was.”

“ _Officially,_ she wasn’t.” Kohle drained his glass with a twisted grimace and set it on the desk. “Do use your brain, Jack. Was I really going to send an _arctic fox_ to the middle of the Sahara? Cynthia came back dehydrated, severely overheated, and she was in the desert a tenth of the time you were.”

Jack clenched his paw so tight it felt like his claws might pierce his palm. How did he not notice? He shook his head hard to dispel the swirling turmoil building in it. “What was she doing out there, then?”

The colonel tapped his claws against the desk, an unnecessary movement that revealed the tiniest fraction of his internal frustration. “Disobeying a direct order, at the very least.”

Jack gaped in disbelief. “She wouldn’t. How could she…?” He shook his head again. “ _Why_ would she do that?”

Kohle leaned over and placed a heavy paw on Jack’s shoulder as a pained, crumpled smile came upon his face. “That, my boy, I would not assume. This particular question you will have to ask her yourself.”

He gave a single pat and drew back as Jack turned his face away again. “I think I may do just that.”

“I sincerely hope so.” Kohle crossed his arms and put on the serious, no-nonsense expression he normally reserved for formal court marshals and scolding his children. “Take the rest of the afternoon off. That’s an order. And you can tell Cynthia also, when you see her.”

Jack knew better than to argue, so he didn’t. He nodded once, dully, and started out of the office, pausing just a few seconds at the door. He clasped the knob in a death grip and after the briefest hesitation said, “I am… grateful for your decision, sir.”

The colonel’s ears perked, and actual mirth returned to his face. “Good to have you back, lad.”

Agent Savage left, closing the door softly behind him. Kohle heaved a mighty sigh, grabbed the glass, and poured himself one last drink before turning back to the window and beautiful afternoon just beyond it. As fortunate as this incident turned out, it was still an awful mess for him to reconcile, would cost him much more time than he was keen on devoting to its clean up. Too much time away from his lovely wife.

The colonel frowned as he put the tumbler to his lips once more. He would remember next time (he wished that there wouldn’t be a next time, but deep inside he knew better than to be so optimistic) to ensure that one Jack Savage was accounted for in some fashion prior to informing one Cynthia Walker.

*****

Walker’s assistant, Stella, would have none of Jack this afternoon and made that very evident when he came by her office.

“As I already mentioned _twice_ , Mr. Savage,” she said, adjusting her glasses so her irritated glare was even more obvious, “Miss Walker is not here at the moment, and I can’t advise you when she’ll be back. Even if I wanted to,” she added under her breath as she began to shut the door in his face. “Good day to you.”

His paw shot out and gripped the door at the last possible second. Stella started in surprise and drew back from him half a step as an intense, dark expression settled on his face. “When she returns,” he said in a voice dangerously low, “ _kindly_ let her know I’d like to speak with her, please.”

The ferret blinked. “I, ah… I’ll do that.”

“Thank you, Miss Rogers.”

Jack turned on his heel and headed back down the hallway. He shoved his paws into his pockets in frustration as his legs moved him purposefully in no particular direction with no particular destination in mind. Home was where he’d been ordered to go, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the building. Not yet. Not until he saw her.

The conversation with Colonel Kohle played over in his mind on repeat, and a cold dread settled in his chest. It didn’t make sense. Going against a direct order? Compromising her current position? There were many highly capable agents available for a rescue mission in the kind of climate that Jack had been stuck in; why did she go to a place at such odds with her preferred environment? It wasn’t just foolish; it was utterly _reckless._ The kind of dangerous that he never wanted for her, never wanted to be a reason for, why did she _do that_ …?

“You have _got_ to be kidding me.”

Jack snapped his head around at the unexpected voice to find Cynthia regarding him with a fiercely annoyed expression. He took another slower look at his surroundings to find himself amongst the numerous high bookshelves and filing cabinets in the G.S.D. archives. How he’d managed to wander there he couldn’t begin to guess, but he wasn’t about to question his good fortune.

Then again, it didn’t seem like good fortune for very long.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, storming toward him with quick and heated strides.

He took an unconscious step back as she halted directly in front of him and scratched at the back of his neck. “I was actually just looking for you—”

“Not _here_ , in this room. _Here,_ in this building.” Cynthia gestured at him with an exasperated paw that ended with a pointed claw in his face. “Coming to work on less than a day’s recovery? _You look like death itself_. Have you even slept at all? Are you _mad_? Or are you trying to show everyone how tough you are, Mr. _I-Never-Miss-an-Extraction_?”

The air crackled; her electric words shot at him as though through a railgun, betraying something that went beyond simple irritation. It was almost as if it bordered on… concern? Worry?

Even recognizing that, Jack fell back on the automatic defensive stance he usually took with such a tone and said, “I’ll thank you not to mother me, Walker. I assure you I’m still perfectly capable of deciding when I can and can’t work.”

Her face blanked completely as she drew herself back. “Of course.” She returned her pointed finger back to her fist and turned away, walking back toward the bookshelf she had left. “It’s none of my business what idiotic choices you make regarding your own well-being.”

Cynthia hefted up a stack of folders and bound records from the bookshelf and held them in her one arm close to her chest. She returned a hard-bound record to the shelf she was standing in front of and began to move further away from him, searching out the proper spot for the next one she was now looking at. She seemed intent on keeping her attention focused with considerable intensity on this menial task instead of on the jackrabbit who shouldn’t have been standing at the entrance of the archive.

Jack uprooted his feet from the floor to follow in her wake. “Listen, I didn’t mean—”

“You said you were looking for me.” Her voice fell flat, stopping him dead a few paces away from her. He watched as she re-shelved another record dismally. “What for?”

“I, ah… I wanted to tell you…” And suddenly all the things that he wanted to ask and to say shriveled up into thin, dry strands, and he couldn’t weave any of them into coherent sentences. He picked up the only one that seemed to keep together long enough to make it out of his mouth. “We’re to take the rest of the afternoon off. Colonel’s orders.”

She gave a single nod devoid of any enthusiasm. “Consider the message delivered. I’ll finish what I’m doing here and head out, then.” Another record was returned. “Thank you, Agent Savage.”

“You’re welcome.” His ears sank behind him at the formal exchange, so far from what he actually wanted to discuss. Jack forced his leaden legs to continue after her and attempted to offer an olive branch. “May I help you with those?” She considered the upturned paws he held out to her with skeptical, half-lidded eyes, and he added, “Many paws make light work.”

Cynthia gave him an obvious eye roll at the old adage but still turned a portion of the remaining records over to him. They moved in separate directions for a short while amongst the stacks, the only sound the soft scuffing of the bound files against the empty spaces on the shelves.

“Isn’t this a task better meant for your assistant, Walker?” Jack asked when he had finished.

“I suppose,” Cynthia allowed, returning a folder back to one of the filing cabinets, “but I just had to get out of my office. If Stella shoved one more water bottle in front of my face, I thought I would spring a leak.”

Jack chuckled at the feeble joke. “I see. Good of her to keep you, ah… hydrated.”

She shot him a sulking sideways glance. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that, really. They say the effects of dehydration can persist for—”

“I’m fine,” she interrupted tersely, and again resumed returning the files she held. “I also don’t need to be mothered, Jack.”

“No, of course not.” He stuck his fists deep into his pockets, the shining image of her standing over him again taking up every crevice in his brain, and he endeavored to steer the conversation back around tactfully. “You were right, by the way.”

She stopped and turned in place to face him. “I’m right about many things,” she replied, turning her paw around her wrist in a nonchalant and dismissive kind of way. “Which in particular are you referring to?”

He pointed to the spot above his eyebrow, now sporting a bit of knotted black thread, before he replaced his paw back in his pocket. “Five stitches.”

“Ah, yes, that… well.” She shrugged. It wasn’t unusual for Cynthia to gloat a bit when proving Jack wrong, but in this particular instance she didn’t seem so inclined. “Fortunate that was the worst of it, I guess. Considering.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Considering.”

Cynthia shifted her gaze toward the bookcase and ran a claw over the spine of the record that she had just replaced absently. She gave a sudden barking laugh that held absolutely no joy in it. “You’d think a mammal as lucky as you would be a better poker player.”

Now Jack shrugged. “I suppose if I have any luck at all, it’s being spent in the right places.”

She nodded and wrapped her arms around the last book she held, hugging it close to her chest. “It’s good that you’re home. Someone would have missed you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “‘Someone’?”

“Yes, someone.” Her voice cracked and she made an obvious show of clearing her throat, continued more casually. “You know, _statistically speaking_ , it’s probable that at least one mammal would have.”

“Missed me.”

“Yes. Missed you.”

“Walker.”

It wasn’t entirely clear when he’d started to gravitate toward her again; indeed, his legs must have been moving all on their own without any input from him. When she turned back toward where he had been, Jack was just inches away from her, his eyes wide and thirsty, drinking in her very essence.

She held the thin hardcover up like a shield against his piercing stare. “Yes?”

Jack put a paw on the book and urged it down, away from her face. Her grip loosened as his tightened, took it from her and set it indiscriminately on the shelf beside them. “I want to thank you for what you did.”

“You don’t thank mammals for doing their job,” Cynthia said thickly, averting her gaze away from those ice blue eyes. “Those are your words, aren’t they?”

“Is that what you were doing there?” The precise scalpel-sharp sentence cut through to the heart of the conversation that they’d been dancing around. “Your _job_?”

Her ears flattened. “Well, of course. Why else would I—?”

“That’s what I was wondering, also.” He was drawn another half step closer to her, the gap between them now diminished to the breadth of a single strand of hair. “Why would you disobey orders, steal your way onto a mission that wasn’t yours, risk your career and your clearance and your _health_ … for a mammal you don’t even like very much?”

Cynthia opened her mouth to give some response, but no words came out. When it closed again her lips quivered with a resonance Jack swore he could feel quaking in his gut.

“It’s horribly selfish of me,” Jack said, and brushed a gentle paw lightly against her cheek. “I know I shouldn’t admit this, but I’m glad it was you. It was my only regret… how much I missed you when the end seemed so near.”

She winced as though she’d been struck, but instead of recoiling pressed against his paw the tiniest bit more. Jack couldn’t take the look she was giving him, a wounded expression that he could only think of one way to mend. The space between them became non-existent as his hips pressed against hers, and he cradled her cheek with his paw firmly. “I want you to know. I want you to know… I don’t think any other voice could have woken me but yours.”

Her breathing came rough and ragged, the wounded face now contorting with confusion and conflict, torn between drawing back or giving in to the magnetic pull of those eyes already so impossibly close. “Why are you saying such things?”

“Because the number of times I’ve said such things is zero, but the number of times I’ve _wanted_ to is uncountable. I’ll never be able to balance that, but I think it’s time I started.” Their eyes locked, their breaths mingling as he drew ever closer to those trembling lips, anticipating the kind of sweetness he’d never before tasted but always been longing for. “Cynthia, I—”

“ _Chiiiiiiiieeeeeeeef!!_ ”

The sudden wailing noise made Jack leap back from her on reflex, and a pair of arms wrapped around his middle just a moment thereafter. He felt a vein on his forehead start to throb when he looked down at the upturned and emotionally steeped face of Zac Goldenwheat staring up at him. Tears hung in the corners of his eyes as he babbled almost incoherently at his boss without taking a single breath.

“They said you were back I didn’t believe it but oh my gosh Chief you look _terrible_ why are you even here today everyone was so worried and hey what are you doing hey hey what whoa whoa whoa WHOA.”

Jack got a firm grasp of his collar and pried his assistant off of him.

“Zac,” he said with a stern look at the young tabby cat he held now at arm’s length dangling just an inch off the floor. “While it’s very good to see you, I must say your timing is _most_ inopportune.”

The feline seemed to shrink under the harsh face of his boss. “But Chief, I was just—”

“No, no. No more talking.” Jack set him back on the floor. “If you’re not making yourself useful in a completely different part of this building by the time I count to three, there will be hell to pay. Do I make myself clear?”

Zac laid his ears back in trepidation. “Y-yes, sir, but could I please first—?”

“ _One._ ”

He bolted from the archive so fast that Jack could have sworn he left a trail of smoke behind him.

“That darn cat.” Jack hissed a sigh from between his teeth and Cynthia gave a quick, light laugh from behind her paw.

“There, see?” she asked with the tiniest smile just curling her lips. “I told you someone missed you.”

Jack ran one paw over his drooped ears as the other readjusted his tie. The spell or trance or _whatever_ that just was seemed to have cleared his mind and the hammering in his chest solidified his discomfort at the thought of attempting to recreate it. He attempted a neutral look. “I admit it’s a bit disappointing that it’s only my assistant feeling that way.”

It was an obvious fishing tactic, but Cynthia didn’t seem to be willing to take him up on his bait. Jack turned back to a wary face, perked ears flushed with a rosy hue. She smoothed her blouse calmly, her stance now guarded and reserved.

“I think I’d better head home,” she said with a vague expression of discontent. “You may have been right, after all. About the dehydration persisting. It probably would be best for both of us to rest.”

His shoulders slumped. “Right. Probably.”

As she skirted past him with a simple murmured goodnight, resolve seized hold of him, a desire too extreme, too hot, too impassioned not to act upon. After all this, how could he let her go again? _Again?_ He’d missed this opportunity too many times not to take advantage of this progress now.

“I’m hungry,” he announced, and that simple sentence succeeded in making Cynthia stop and turn back to him. It was a disingenuous and desperate plan he was forming, but this was the only invitation that had ever worked for him before. “We have a whole afternoon off. Why don’t you come have something to eat with me?”

Cynthia tilted her head in mild interest. “Hmm… we haven’t eaten an actual meal together since—”

“Op bup bup,” Jack interrupted, putting his paw up with a lopsided smile. “We agreed never to speak of that again.”

She smirked mischievously. “I’m simply acknowledging a particular past event exists, Jack. I didn’t say anything at all yet about how you got yourself _piss drunk_ and—”

“Alright, that’s quite enough.” He folded his paws behind him and gave a slight bow. “Well, Miss Walker? What do you say?”

Jack held that stance for what seemed like an eternity, too afraid to move lest he upset the precarious balance that might just work the calculations playing over her face in his favor. He was about to backtrack, to play it off and retreat again in resounding defeat when the most blessed sound came into his ears, and his heart pounded so hard he thought it might burst in his chest.

“Oh… why not?” Cynthia turned and gave an alluring look over her shoulder at him as he straightened himself up. “Come on, then. I’ll drive.”

She started away from him again toward the archive exit, her hips swaying just so and her tail swishing a hypnotic rhythm behind her as he followed obediently. How had he never realized before what a pleasant view this was?

Given his track record with her, what he was about to attempt was almost an impossibility. He could estimate the chances of his success somewhere in the single digits.

But then, Jack Savage never was terribly good at math.

**Author's Note:**

> That's the end of the series. Thanks for reading!


End file.
